Praise Jesus

 

(I'm trying my best to be a slave to Christ.)

Yesterday, I woke up at 8 a.m. and drank a cup of freshly brewed coffee. Then I read the headlines on my smartphone while taking a shit. A woman in her 30s from the city of Incheon was found unconscious in her apartment building. She had taken a boatload of pills after being ripped off for more than $80,000 by her landlord. Sadly, she died during the ambulance ride on the way to the hospital. The builder who owns the complex has swindled more than $9,000,000 from his tenants. This is the third suicide in the last couple of weeks.

I ate hash browns for breakfast as I watched Fox News. There was a mass homicide in a small town called Dadeville which is located in the state of Alabama. Over twenty people were shot, and four have succumbed to their injuries so far. Many are currently in critical condition at a local ICU grasping to life by sheer force of God’s will. One of the victims was a teenager who had just earned a full ride to college on a football scholarship. His name was Phil Dowdell, and his grandmother said that he had a beautiful smile. Unfortunately, Phil will no longer be smiling thanks to the murderous prick who gunned him down. The suspect is still at large as I write this drivel.

I called my mother using Facebook Messenger.

I said, “I went to Costco the other day with my wife.”

She said, “How did it go?”

“OK, I guess. But I fell down after slipping on some water.”

“Are you going to survive?”

“I hope so. But here’s the straight-skinny truth. It took a good deal of time before I was able to eventually pull myself off the floor.”

“I hope you didn’t break anything.”

I shook my head. “I’m still in a lot of pain, but thankfully all my bones are intact.”

“You got to be careful as you get older. You’re not a spring chicken anymore.”

“Tell me about it.”

Later in the afternoon, I walked to church by my lonesome. Rice-Boy Larry told me that he was drowning in homework, so I gave him a pass. It was a six-mile jaunt there and back. I’ve been exercising more these days and sticking religiously to my diet. I’m trying my best to age with grace. As I enter my golden years, I want to look a little more like Johnny Depp and a little less like Brendan Fraser. Good luck with that, right?

My pastor is Korean, so he spent the entire sermon talking about the problems facing the peninsula. No big surprise. In fact, he constantly mourns the current direction of his nation. For instance, only one percent of Korean university students attend church in these troubled times. And he claims the numbers are even more grim when it comes to middle and high school kids. He went on to discuss his recurring nightmares about the utter collapse of the Korean church.

But as a five-point Calvinist, I never get caught up in the minutiae. I don’t even believe in free will if you want to know the truth. God has the world in his mighty hands, and he’s going to do as he wishes because the universe is under his control. To that point, the Lord has never asked for my advice on one single occasion. And it’s not like Christ stops by on the weekends to get my opinions on the wars in Yemen or the Ukraine. So I’ve simply accepted the fact that I’m merely a speck of dust who’s just along for the ride. Praise Jesus.

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